The World Wide Web (WWW) or Internet is comprised of an expansive network of interconnected computers upon which businesses, governments, groups, and individuals throughout the world maintain inter-linked computer files known as Web pages. Originally, the Internet was devised for the transfer of information. More recently, the Internet has increasingly been used as a shopping tool for users, much like an electronic catalogue. The increasing number of Internet users purchasing products over the Internet has resulted in significant changes in the approach businesses take to product sales, converting from a standard business model to an electronic business, or e-business model.
In a customer's shopping experience, either on the Web or through a salesperson, the offer presented to the customer typically doesn't present a valid lease option for payment unless the vendor has involved a leasing sales representative or uses non-committed planning rates in creating the offer document. For example, a customer wishes to purchase a computer from a vendor, either in person, or from the vendor's Web site. The vendor can readily incorporate a purchase price for the cost of the computer in the customer's offering catalog. However, the vendor does not have a simple, on-demand electronic leasing service that automatically presents timely lease prices concurrently with the purchase price. To be able to present interest rate and customer credit accurate lease prices along with the purchase price of the computer electronically, the vendor will need to make a relatively large and possibly a prohibitive investment in sales system development along with a proprietary-like commitment to a partnership with one or more third party lessors.
In the on-demand world, retailers and wholesalers require the ability to easily and readily integrate lease options into their sales solutions for their customers at the time of shopping and checkout at any point of sale. The sales tool medium can range from a house-grown product and service configurator that the vendor uses to pull together an offer proposal to an e-procurement (electronic procurement) system. One example of an e-procurement system currently used is the Ariba® software.
Vendors need to be able to dynamically support those B2B and non-B2B sales systems with leasing options cheaply and flexibly for the different ways customers do business with them.
Numerous customers have turned to e-procurement systems to automate and streamline their procurement processes. Several third-party companies have created e-procurement systems for those customers to use as a business to business (“B2B”) solution or tool to manage procurement in their companies. A lack of leasing integration with e-procurement systems will affect the ability for customers to buy products on lease and limit their choices a time of buy.
What is therefore needed is a system, a service, a computer program product, and an associated method that allow companies to electronically interact with a leasing organization, to present either a planning lease quote for a generic customer that a customer can use for comparison purposes, or a committed lease quote for a specific customer. Vendors and customers using electronic procurement (or e-procurement) systems are in need of a leasing solution that is flexible and that provides better integrated leasing prices at time of checkout. This solution should avoid re-keying and disjointed processes. In addition, the solution should support all sales methods (including e-procurement processes), providing financing prices in catalogs and checkout. The need for such a solution has heretofore remained unsatisfied.